Monday, February 05, 2007

Silence bounced around inside my head, but soon enough noises began bouncing around instead. Shortly after that, I could hear voices and my eyes slowly began to focus on what was around me.

Rocksun, Hudson, and I were standing on the rooftop of the Queen’s Citadel of Hope. Shards of the shattered globe littered the area around us. Something seemed different but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it dawned on me, the Citadel was humming with life. In the distance, I could see the normal air traffic of Throneworld. Aircars and spacecraft flew back and forth in their lanes.

“Wow, what happened?” Hudson looked around, stunned by what he saw.

“Where is she?” Rocksun asked.

“The Queen?” I asked. I looked up but didn’t see the battle cruiser that was hovering over us just a few minutes ago. “Where’d the ship go?”

“Where’s Eve?” Rocksun said tersely.

I looked around, she wasn’t anywhere on the roof. Before I could say anything, Rocksun quickly sprinted to the staircase and rushed down it. I chased after him with Hudson on my heels. The three of us skidded to a halt when we reached the Queen’s throne room. The Queen was standing near her throne with a puzzled look on her face, her courtiers and advisors were standing around her wondering why she had that look.

“Gentlemen, you are alive,” she said to us. “Though you three look just as confused as I feel.”

“Everyone’s here?” Rocksun asked.

“Unbelievable,” I said.

“But how?” Hudson asked.

“Everything appears to be just as it was just before our adventure,” the Queen stated. “It is as if nothing happened at all.”

“So that whole year that my troops and I spent holed up in that ship didn’t happen?”

“It appears that it didn’t,” Lombarr stepped forward. “We can run some tests, but I don’t think that we’re going to get anything conclusive. It seems that everything ‘reset’ back to normal when that device that was warping space was destroyed.”

“Pretty convenient, huh?” Hudson grunted. “I gotta tell you though, everyone else may say that it didn’t happen, but I’ve got the bruises to prove that it did.”

“You and me both,” I agreed. “I guess we should all be happy that everything is back to normal, then, right?”

“Agreed,” the Queen nodded. “Gentlemen, I am once again indebted to you. You have done your galaxy a great service.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” Rocksun bowed.

The Queen quickly called her royal staff together and a party was held to thank us for our efforts. Hudson regaled anyone who would listen great stories of stomping on bugs and after a year of living in fear, those who were trapped in the grounded space ship were grateful that things would be normal again. As the evening wore on, I lost track of Rocksun. I finally found him outside on a balcony looking out to the stars.

“She’s gone,” he mumbled. He didn’t even turn to look at me.

“Yeah, I figured,” I answered. I held up a green bottle for him. “Care for a drink?”

Emotionlessly, he grasped the bottle and took a sip.

“Hmmm, not bad,” he said. “What is it?”

“Rolling Rock,” I answered. “My wife says it’s a rock star beer.”

“So drinking this makes you a rock star?”

“No,” I chuckled. “I’m happy just being a plain old intergalactic gladiator.”

“It was tough on that ship,” Rocksun confessed to me. “I didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the galaxy, I didn’t know if the Queen was alive or dead. I just knew that I had to keep myself and those with me alive. Survival became our only priority.”

“I can only imagine.”

“Then when you guys showed up at the door and Eve woke up, I knew we had a fighting chance. I knew we could beat them. Now everything’s back the way it was and she’s gone. Back to the future, I suppose.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Yep, she’s gone.” Leaning over on the railing, Rocksun looked out into the night sky.